Office 365 Customer Lockbox Requests

As an Office 365 admin, customer lockbox requests allows you to control how a Microsoft support engineer accesses your data. Sometimes if you run into an issue, you might need a Microsoft support engineer to help you fix it. In some cases, the support engineer will require access to your Office 365 content to troubleshoot and fix the issue. Customer lockbox requests allows you to control whether to give the support engineer access to your data. There's also an expiration time on the request and content access is removed after the support engineer has fixed the issue. Check out Security, Privacy and Compliance Information for Office 365 and Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online for more information on how Office 365 uses your data.

Customer lockbox is included in the Office 365 E5 plan. If you don't have an Office 365 E5 plan, you can buy a separate customer lockbox subscription with any Office 365 Enterprise plan. Check out Plans and pricing for more info. Customer lockbox works with Exchange Online, SharePoint Online, and OneDrive for Business.

Customer lockbox request overview video

Example Customer Lockbox request

These are the typical steps for a customer lockbox request.

Someone at your company or school has an issue with their Office 365 mailbox.

After some troubleshooting, you can't fix the issue and open a support request with Microsoft support.

The support engineer reviews your service request, and needs access to your Exchange Online content to repair the issue.

The support engineer logs into the customer lockbox request tool and sends you an email letting you know there's a pending customer lockbox request. All requests are reviewed by Microsoft support managers before you get the request.

Note: If you reject or don't approve the request in 12 hours, access is automatically revoked. If this happens, you might continue to experience a specific service issue that could be resolved by allowing an engineer to access the content.

The support engineer gets the approval message, logs into Exchange Online and fixes the issues. As soon as the issue is fixed, the customer lockbox request is closed and access is revoked.

Turn Customer Lockbox request on or off in the Office 365 admin center

You can turn customer lockbox requests on or off in the Office 365 admin center. When you turn on customer lockbox requests, Microsoft is required to obtain your approval prior to accessing your content to fix an issue. To turn customer lockbox requests on or off: